DOCSLIB.ORG

This Dissertation Has Been 64—3183 Microfilmed Exactly As Received

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
This Dissertation Has Been 64—3183 Microfilmed Exactly As Received This dissertation has been 64—3183 microfilmed exactly as received MURPHY, John Leo, 1923- SOME PROBLEMS IN THE ANONYMOUS DRAMA OF THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE. The University of Oklahoma, Ph.D., 1963 Language and Literature, modern University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan THE UNIVERSITÏ OP OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE SOME PROBLEMS IN THE ANONYMOUS DRAMA OP THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE PACULTY In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OP PHILOSOPHY BY JOHN l V‘ MURPHY Norman, Oklahoma 1963 SOME PROBLEMS IN THE ANONYMOUS DRAMA OF THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE APPROVED BY DISSERTATION COMMITTEE MAGISTRO ET AMIGO GARISSIMO JOSEPH HANGOGK MARSHBÜRN namque tu solebas meas esse allquid putare nugas 111 I should like above all to acknowledge my many obliga­ tions to Professor Calvin G, Thayer, Department of English, University of Oklahoma, and director of this dissertation. My brother, Donald Murphy, and my mother, Mrs. Leo Murphy, gave help without which I could not have brought this study to a conclusion. Finally, I wish to give special thanks to the following professors for serving as members of my disser­ tation committee: Philip J, Nolan, Chairman, Department of Classics, University of Oklahoma; Alphonse J, Fritz, Department of English, University of Oklahoma; Jack L, Kendall, Department of English, University of Oklahoma, iv TABLE OP CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION................. 1 II. LOCRINE AND SELIMUS: SOMÉT IMPLICATÏÔJJ3 OP THE BORROWINGS PROM SPENSER AND GREENE.......... 7 III. LOCRINE: CONJECTURES AND ÏRPË5ENCES PROM QUARTO TO M A N U S C R I P T ...... 58 IV. SELIMUS: THE TEXT AND THE " l (5S5Le a t m a n u s c r i p t .... 105 V. SELIMUS: CONJECTURES AND INFERENCES PROM QUARTO TO MANUSCRIPT .......... l8l VI. LOCRINE: A RECONSTRUCTED rilSï'ÔRÏ OP LOCRINE: POUL PAPERS TO QUARtO AND ITS CONNECTIONS WITH SELIMUS . 199 Bibliography ........................ 226 V SOME PROBLEMS IN THE ANONYMOUS DRAMA OP THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Scholarly inquiry in the anonymous drama of the; Elizabethan stage has generally centered around either of two interests. In the first instance, quite naturally, such inquiry has been primarily concerned to establish the author. Shakespeare holds pride of place here, as one would expect. The "Shakespeare Apocrypha", plays attributed for one reason or another to Shakespeare, but generally denied a place in ttie canon, not only by Heminges and Condell, but by most later scholars, have nourished the study of the anonymous drama of his age for over three centuries. More recently, the growing interest in the canon of Marlowe, Peele, Greene, Kyd, Webster, Chapman, Mars ton, and their lesser contempo­ raries has broadened and deepened this earlier and more special interest. The second center of interest for research sees in the anonymous drama a number of challenges to scholarly interpretation and conjecture in building up a coherent and comprehensive picture of the drama in the Tudor-Stewart age* 2 To reconstruct the manuscript that lies behind a printed quarto, to clarify some obscure or disputed point of state history, to see more clearly into the import of the organiza­ tion and personnel of the London companies on the drama of the time, to trace out the literary influences on the drama both from dramatic and non-dramatic forms— all these, and many more, have been motives to prolonged research and brilliant interpre­ tation on the part of scholarly giants of our century. Although inquiry has a tendency to center around one or the other of these two interests, any serious investiga­ tion quickly finds itself involved in an inextricable inter­ weaving of the two. Seeking a probable author for a play necessarily involves the fullest possible recreation of its context. But here, we may mark off a clear period in research. The "new bibliography", now more than a half-century old, ushered in a new dispensation in the mapping out of the problems of literary study in this field. Brave men were before Agamemnon: Capell, Malone, Dyce, lÿ-cho Mommsen, P. A. Daniel— these and many others often possessed amazing insight into problems, some of which have not been greatly advanced beyond the point where they were left by the learning and critical ability of these men. Nevertheless, no matter how far one's interests may range, and they should be as catholic as possible, the student of literature must be first and last a student of texts. The scholarly student of literature is, willy-nilly, a bibliographer; he cannot help himself. 3 Herein lies, I venture to think, the peculiar fascination of the drama for the scholar. The drama is the one indisputably great and major form of literature in our culture which is preserved by texts but takes its character­ istic life and vital forms from the living voice of men, not from the written scroll or the printed page. More importantly, it seeks its final realization in these translitérai forms. Thus, its social base, both in its intimate life and in its immediate appeal, has forced its great masters into a simi­ larly intimate and immediate involvement with the form and pressure of their times. And so, although the scholar must take some text as his point of departure, in seeking any fullness of under­ standing of a problem in drama, he may never take the text as his point of rest. But the text and what it may reveal to properly instructed attention is Ariadne's thread. With­ out this thread, even the most alert students will probably remain in the maze forever. The special merit of McKerrow, Pollard, Greg, Chambers, and J, Dover Wilson is that they saw this in all its force and clarity. Everyone now sees that we must seek to determine what kind of a manuscript lies behind our printed quartos and folios and why this manuscript was prepared, if we are to arrive at any conclusions that can command the attention of thoughtful men. But this inquiry may carry the danger of excessive narrowness by the very rigor with which its method has been developed by its exceptionally able practitioners. When this happens, all too often inquiry and certainty seem to dissolve in a wilderness of conjecture, inference, and contradictions which invests all efforts at clarification with a kind of a priori hope­ lessness. To read Kirchbaum on Pollard or Predson Bowers on practically anyone is to feel that bibliography is not so much a vade mecum as a pons asinorum. This present study is primarily a bibliographical inquiry. Insofar as it has a conclusion, this conclusion is a highly tentative reconstruction of the major steps in the history of the text of Locrine, an anonymous drama, which survives in a single quarto edition printed in 1595. In intention and, I hope, by implication, the study has a more far-reaching aim. It seeks to show the need for some synthesis of present knowledge, but a synthesis reflecting an ordered methodology. I see the central dialec­ tic of scholarship as moving fruitfully between certainty and conjecture. Any theory is simply a conjecture comprehen­ sive enough to make all particular certainties coherent euid intelligible. Such a theory should open out at once a number of lines for further research by which its main presuppositions may be tested. In the following chapters, I review previous scholarship on particular matters, for example, the import of borrowings from Spenser on the problems of author and date of composition of Locrine. At once, this involves us 5 in the study of a conç>anlcn drama, also anonymous, Sellmus» I offer evidence from my own study to supplement the evidence collected by other scholars, but, my main endeavor is to suggest, finally, the futility of seeking any further certainty in these matters except in a larger context of textual and literary historical theory. I suggest that we have a vast range of such knowledge, but that we lack equally comprehen­ sive theories with which to order our knowledge. This study, of course, does not offer such theories; it does seek to underline the necessity of creating these larger theoretical frames of reference if we are to make systematic progress in our studies# This line of thought especially suggests itself when we turn to a close study of the texts in an effort to establish the history of the manuscript that forms the printer's copy* I think our texts offer pointers to probable truth, but we find ourselves stopped short by the absence of bold and com­ prehensive thought concerning the general nature of abridged texts, reported texts, stolen texts, or even, "continuous copy". In the nature of things, the modest limits of this investigation force us to inconclusive results. Evidence is offered that would seem to establish strong grounds for linking Robert Greene with crucial stages in the history of these two dramas, Locrine and Selimus. Yet, the absence of broad critical surveys of such features as the relationship of rhetorical figures to the chronology of drama leavesus 6 foi* the most part with little more than impressionistic judg­ ments and conclusions. I wish to make it clear that none of the major problems raised in this study are taken to any stage of exhaustive inquiry. Any such inquiry would, of course, be a separate dissertation. I conceive this work to be a preliminary exercise clearing the ground for a larger work on some general problems of study in the drama from the founding of the Theater to the death of Queen Elizabeth. CHAPTER II LOCRINE AND SELIMUS; SOME IMPLICATIONS OP THE BORROWINGS PROM SPENSER AND GREENE The past decade has seen several extended studies of Locrine; Baldwin Maxwell In his Studies In the Shakespeare Apocrypha, Irving Rlbner In his The English History Play In the Age of Shakespeare, and most recently, an extended dis­ cussion of date and authorship In T.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Plutarch, Machiavelli and Shakespeare's Coriolanus Patrick
    The Changing Faces of Virtue: Plutarch, Machiavelli and Shakespeare’s Coriolanus Patrick Ashby University of Bristol [email protected] Introduction: The hinges of virtue ‘Let it be virtuous to be obstinate’, says Caius Martius Coriolanus, shortly before the catastrophe of Shakespeare’s tragedy (Coriolanus, 5.3.26).1 In uttering these words, he articulates a moral hypothesis which is of central importance to Coriolanus: the supposition that steadfastness of principle is a fundamental good. This is a theory which the play puts to the test. The idea of ‘virtue’ — in a variety of guises — is a key focus of this essay, which identifies as crucial those moments at which definitions of virtue are unsettled, transformed, or confronted with a range of alternatives. Several commentators have connected Shakespeare’s Coriolanus with the political ideas of Niccolò Machiavelli, the Florentine theorist whose notoriety rests upon his recommendation of moral flexibility for political leaders. For Anne Barton, who reads the play in the context of Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy’s history of early Rome, Coriolanus dramatises the futile persistence of obsolescent virtues (the valorisation of battlefield heroics) in an environment of subtler needs and growing political sophistication.2 In Shakespeare and the Popular Voice, Annabel Patterson hints at Shakespeare’s sympathy with the idea of popular political representation, proposing that ‘there is nothing in the play to challenge that famous interpretation of the tribunate which [. .] Machiavelli made a premise of Renaissance political theory’.3 John Plotz 1 William Shakespeare, Coriolanus, The Norton Shakespeare, ed. by Stephen Greenblatt, Katherine Eisaman Maus, Jean E.
    [Show full text]
  • 4. Shakespeare Authorship Doubt in 1593
    54 4. Shakespeare Authorship Doubt in 1593 Around the time of Marlowe’s apparent death, the name William Shakespeare appeared in print for the first time, attached to a new work, Venus and Adonis, described by its author as ‘the first heir of my invention’. The poem was registered anonymously on 18 April 1593, and though we do not know exactly when it was published, and it may have been available earlier, the first recorded sale was 12 June. Scholars have long noted significant similarities between this poem and Marlowe’s Hero and Leander; Katherine Duncan-Jones and H.R. Woudhuysen describe ‘compelling links between the two poems’ (Duncan-Jones and Woudhuysen, 2007: 21), though they admit it is difficult to know how Shakespeare would have seen Marlowe’s poem in manuscript, if it was, as is widely believed, being written at Thomas Walsingham’s Scadbury estate in Kent in the same month that Venus was registered in London. The poem is preceded by two lines from Ovid’s Amores, which at the time of publication was available only in Latin. The earliest surviving English translation was Marlowe’s, and it was not published much before 1599. Duncan-Jones and Woudhuysen admit, ‘We don’t know how Shakespeare encountered Amores’ and again speculate that he could have seen Marlowe’s translations in manuscript. Barber, R, (2010), Writing Marlowe As Writing Shakespeare: Exploring Biographical Fictions DPhil Thesis, University of Sussex. Downloaded from www. rosbarber.com/research. 55 Ovid’s poem is addressed Ad Invidos: ‘to those who hate him’. If the title of the epigram poem is relevant, it is more relevant to Marlowe than to Shakespeare: personal attacks on Marlowe in 1593 are legion, and include the allegations in Richard Baines’ ‘Note’ and Thomas Drury’s ‘Remembrances’, Kyd’s letters to Sir John Puckering, and allusions to Marlowe’s works in the Dutch Church Libel.
    [Show full text]
  • The Relationship of the Dramatic Works of John Lyly to Later Elizabethan Comedies
    Durham E-Theses The relationship of the dramatic works of John Lyly to later Elizabethan comedies Gilbert, Christopher G. How to cite: Gilbert, Christopher G. (1965) The relationship of the dramatic works of John Lyly to later Elizabethan comedies, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/9816/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 THE RELATIONSHIP OP THE DRAMATIC WORKS OP JOHN LYLY TO LATER ELIZABETHAN COMEDIES A Thesis Submitted in candidature for the degree of Master of Arts of the University of Durham by Christopher G. Gilbert 1965 The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. DECLARATION I declare this work is the result of my independent investigation.
    [Show full text]
  • Representations of Spain in Early Modern English Drama
    Saugata Bhaduri Polycolonial Angst: Representations of Spain in Early Modern English Drama One of the important questions that this conference1 requires us to explore is how Spain was represented in early modern English theatre, and to examine such representation especially against the backdrop of the emergence of these two nations as arguably the most important players in the unfolding game of global imperialism. This is precisely what this article proposes to do: to take up representative English plays of the period belonging to the Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604) which do mention Spain, analyse what the nature of their treat- ment of Spain is and hypothesise as to what may have been the reasons behind such a treatment.2 Given that England and Spain were at bitter war during these twenty years, and given furthermore that these two nations were the most prominent rivals in the global carving of the colonial pie that had already begun during this period, the commonsensical expectation from such plays, about the way Spain would be represented in them, should be of unambiguous Hispanophobia. There were several contextual reasons to occasion widespread Hispanophobia in the period. While Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon (1509) and its subsequent annulment (1533) had already sufficiently complicated Anglo-Hispanic relations, and their daughter Queen Mary I’s marriage to Philip II of Spain (1554) and his subsequent becoming the King of England and Ireland further aggravated the 1 The conference referred to here is the International Conference on Theatre Cultures within Globalizing Empires: Looking at Early Modern England and Spain, organised by the ERC Project “Early Modern European Drama and the Cultural Net (DramaNet),” at the Freie Universität, Ber- lin, November 15–16, 2012, where the preliminary version of this article was presented.
    [Show full text]
  • Three Eras, Two Men, One Value: Fides in Modern Performances of Shakespeare’S
    Three Eras, Two Men, One Value: Fides in Modern Performances of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra Depictions of Marc Antony and Caesar Augustus have changed dramatically between the first and twenty-first centuries, partially because of William Shakespeare’s seventeenth-century play Antony and Cleopatra. In 2006 and 2010, England’s Royal Shakespeare Company staged vastly different interpretations of this classically influenced Shakespearean text. How do the modern performances rework ancient views of Antony and Augustus, particularly in light of the ancient Roman value fides (loyalty or good faith)? This paper answers that question by examining the intersections between Greco-Roman literary-historic narratives – as received in Shakespeare’s early modern play – and the two modern performances. The contemporary versions of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra create contrasting constructions of Antony and Augustus by modernizing the characters and/or their worlds. The 2006 rendition (directed by Gregory Doran) presents an explosive but weak-willed Antony (Sir Patrick Stewart) and a prudish yet petulant Augustus (John Hopkins). On the other hand, the 2010 adaptation (directed by Michael Boyd) shows a hotheaded and frank Antony (Darrell D’Silva) who struggles against a cold and manipulative Augustus (John Mackay). Both performances reveal the complexity of these ancient figures as the men engage with and evaluate claims upon their familial, societal, and personal fides. Representations of Antony and Augustus necessarily involve fides, though classical accounts do not always feature this term. As military and political leaders, both men led lives filled with decisions about loyalty, specifically what deserved it and in what degree. The modern dramatizations further underscore fides in their portrayals of Antony and Augustus.
    [Show full text]
  • Study Guide 2016-2017
    Study Guide 2016-2017 by William Shakespeare Standards Theatre English Language Arts Social Studies TH.68.C.2.4: Defend personal responses. LAFS.68.RH.1.2: Determine central ideas. SS.912.H.1.5: Examine social issues. TH.68.C.3.1: Discuss design elements. LAFS.910.L.3.4: Determine unknown words. TH.68.H.1.5: Describe personal responses. LAFS.910.L.3.5: Demonstrate figurative language. TH.912.S.1.8: Use research to extract clues. LAFS.1112.SL.1.1: Initiate collaborative discussions. TH.912.S.2.9: Research artistic choices. TH.912.H.1.4: Interpret through historical lenses. Content Advisory: Antony and Cleopatra is a political drama fueled by intimate relationships. There are battle scenes. If it were a movie, Antony and Cleopatra would be rated “PG-13.” !1 Antony and Cleopatra Table of Contents Introduction p. 3 Enjoying Live Theater p. 3 About the Play p. 6 Plot Summary p. 6 Meet the Characters p. 7 Meet the Playwright p. 8 Historical Context p. 11 Elizabethan Theater p. 11 Activities p. 12 Themes and Discussion p. 17 Bibliography p. 17 !2 Antony and Cleopatra An Introduction Educators: Thank you for taking the time out of your very busy schedule to bring the joy of theatre arts to your classroom. We at Orlando Shakes are well aware of the demands on your time and it is our goal to offer you supplemental information to compliment your curriculum with ease and expediency. What’s New? Lots! First, let me take a moment to introduce our new Children’s Series Coordinator, Brandon Yagel.
    [Show full text]
  • University Wits
    A brief study of UNIVERSITY WITS Presented for The students of Degree 1 English Hons. By Dr. Mohammad Shaukat Ansari Department of English M.L.S.M. College, Darbhanga, Bihar (L.N. Mithila University) UNIVERSITY WITS A Creative Group of Pioneer English dramatists (1585 – 1600) Elizabethan Age – The Golden age of Drama. The Pre-Shakespearean dramatists – John Lyly, Robert Greene, George Peele, Thomas Kyde, Christopher Marlowe – are known as University Wits. Marlowe has been justly called “the father of English drama”, “the Morning Star of the English Drama”. • The University Wits is a phrase used to name a group of late 16th century English playwrights who were educated at the universities. • Christopher Marlowe, 1564 - 93, Robert Greene, 1560 - 92 and Thomas Kyd, 1558 - 94 (graduates from Cambridge University) • Thomas Lodge, 1558 - 1625 and George Peele, 1558 - 98 (graduates from Oxford University) • The University Wits were professional writers in English, and prepared the way for the writings of William Shakespeare, who was born just two months after Christopher Marlowe. • Shakespeare was indebted to each of them. • The drama was truly national that time. • A true expression of national genius in England despite various foreign influences • Dramas became food for mind as well as eyes. • Even, performances were given every night, and as such dramas became source of income. • The University Wits drew materials from old plays, mythology, legend and history, and even revised them appropriately. • The University Wits were aware of demands of stage and audience too. • The University Wits made significant contributions to the development of English drama. • Their dramas were full of actions, thrills, sensations, supernaturalism and refinement.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction
    introduction Romance is a twilight zone in studies of late sixteenth-century literary genres in England. Half-way between the nostalgia of medieval chivalry and the enterprising spirit of early modern exploration, piracy and com- merce as preludes to a future empire, it is both very old-fashioned and innovatively modern. Appearing in narrative as well as in dramatic forms, romance lays simultaneous claims to history and imagination, which were not necessarily in opposition in the period, and caters for a readership of servants and citizens while equally fi nding its way into Spenserian epic, Sidneyan pastoral or even late Shakespearian tragicomedy and Miltonian poetry. The three plays grouped in this volume are early modern attempts at conquering that twilight zone in a context of expanding contacts with Muslim lands around the Mediterranean. romance and conquest in early modern england ‘The structural core of all fi ction’ for Northrop Frye, who sees it as a means to translate mythical archetypes into human experience, 1 romance is also ‘a notoriously slippery category’, as Barbara Fuchs warns. 2 The basic defi nition with which Helen Cooper starts her authoritative study of the genre is a primarily narrative fi ction in the vernacular which appears from the twelfth century onward, characterised by exotic settings, distant in time and/or place, concerned with love and/or chivalry, and involving high-ranking individuals engaged in some ideal quest. It may include such recurrent patterns as encounters with the supernatural, obscured identities or miraculous conversions. 3 Patricia Parker’s earlier deconstructionist approach complicates this defi nition by insisting on the proliferating digressions which form the structure of romance and defer its closure and collective coherence.
    [Show full text]
  • CYMBELINE" in the Fllii^Slhi TI CENTURY
    "CYMBELINE" IN THE fllii^SLHi TI CENTURY Bennett Jackson Submitted in partial fulfilment for the de ree of uaster of Arts in the University of Birmingham. October 1971. University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. SYNOPSIS This thesis consists of an Introduction, followed by Part I (chapters 1-2) in which nineteenth- century criticism of the play is discussed, particular attention being paid to Helen Faucit's essay on Imogen, and its relationship to her playing of the role. In Part II the stags-history of Oymbcline in London is traced from 1785 to Irving's Lyceum production of 1896. Directions from promptbooks used by G-.P. Cooke, W.C. Macready, Helen Eaucit, and Samuel ±helps are transcribed and discussed, and in the last chapter the influence of Bernard Shaw on Ellen Terry's Imogen is considered in the light of their correspondence and the actress's rehearsal copies of the play. There are three appendices: a list of performances; transcriptions of two newspaper reviews (from 1843 and 1864) and one private diary (Gordon Crosse's notes on the Lyceum Gymbeline); and discussion of one of the promptbooks prepared for Charles Kean's projected production.
    [Show full text]
  • Petr Osolsobě Sir Thomas More
    PETR OSOLSOBĚ SIR THOMAS MORE: LESS COLLABORATIVE, MORE SHAKESPEAREAN Is Sir Thomas More, in all its fortuitous dramatic unity, the subtle symmetries of its characters, and its network of cross-references a collaborative work? As far as modern editors are concerned, there is a measure of agreement that the original play was the work of Anthony Munday and Henry Chettle, and was completed around 1592-94. Its manuscript contains a number of rewritten and additional passages, attributed to Chettle, Heywood, Dekker and Shakespeare. Gabrieli and Melchiori, in their admirable 1990 Revels edition of Sir Thomas More, support the assumption: playwriting at the time, at least for the public stage, was a collaborative practice between men of letters and actors and the men of the theatre, frequently on the basis of a ‘plot’ devised by a single author[. Besides,] all the extant or lost plays connected with Munday’s name [...] are written in collaboration. (Gabrieli and Melchiori 1990: 13) Munday’s claim to authorship is, furthermore, supported by his access to Harpsfield’s Life of More as well as to other rare recusant literature used in the play; Munday was the right-hand man of Richard Topcliffe, a notorious priest-catcher under Queen Elizabeth, and his close ‘collaborator’ in arresting and executing Roman Catholic priests Edmund Campion, Ralph Sherwin and Alexander Briant in 1581 (Gabrieli and Melchiori 1990: 8). Moreover, Munday was familiar with Latin tags and quotations which are abundant in the original text, always correct in spelling, grammar and syntax, owing to his daily usage of Latin during the months he spent as a spy in the Catholic English College in Rome from February to May 1579.
    [Show full text]
  • The First Quarto of King Henry V Edited by Andrew Gurr Excerpt More Information
    Cambridge University Press 0521623367 - The First Quarto of King Henry V Edited by Andrew Gurr Excerpt More information 1 Introduction INTRODUCTION The significance of the quarto text of Henry V The character of the text of Henry V printed in the First Folio of 1623 (f) is not seriously in doubt. As the NCS edition and others argue, it was set from an authorial manuscript that had not been through the developmental process of emendation for performance. The version printed in 1600 (q), however, tells a different story. It contains several features that show radical corrections made to the f text either in the course of preparing the play for performance or during its first run on stage. It cuts the total number of lines by a half, eliminating entire scenes and transposing others, and shortens or cuts all the longer speeches. The speed with which it came to the press only a year after its first staging is a mark both of its proximity to the text performed by the company that owned it and of its authority as an official version. Between 1598 and 1600 ten plays owned by Shakespeare’s company came into print, seven of them Shakespeare’s own. With the sole exception of the Henry V quarto, and Jonson’s Every Man Out of his Humour, which Jonson gave to the press himself, all of them were at least three years old. In the speed of its delivery to the press, q Henry V is unique even among the so-called ‘bad’ quartos. What its text can tell us about its origins and its intended function is uniquely valuable for an understanding of what Shakespeare’s company did to adapt the play-manuscripts he sold to them for staging.
    [Show full text]
  • Hamlet and the Invention of Tragedy1
    Hamlet and the invention of Tragedy1 Helen Cooper UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD The first thing that should be said about Hamlet is that he is a serial killer. He kills off a higher proportion of the speaking cast list, either directly with his own hand or indirectly, than any other Shakespearean character, including Richard III and Macbeth. To begin with, his victims include the entire Polonius family. He kills Polonius deliberately, though it is true that he believes him to be someone else at the time; but such an instance of mistaken identity, of killing B when one had set out with the intention of killing A, is not acceptable as an excuse for murder in a court of law. Laertes he kills with his own hand, though inadvertently; the text leaves open the opportunity, taken up in many productions, to have Hamlet engineer the change of swords deliberately as result of realizing that Laertes’ is unbated, but he cannot know that it is poisoned. Ophelia’s death he causes indirectly, but there can be no question but that he carries total moral responsibility for it, first tendering her affection, then proceeding through public humiliation to private violent abuse, and finally murdering her father. The First Quarto has Laertes make the double accusation of responsibility for the catastrophes to both Polonius and Ophelia explicit: Griefe upon griefe, my father murdered, My sister thus distracted: Cursed be his soule that wrought this wicked act.2 At no point, however, does Hamlet acknowledge his own role in bringing about her death, nor does he show any compunction over it.
    [Show full text]